How could Reflection not lead to code smells?

Question

I come from low level languages - C++ is the highest level I program in.

Recently I came across Reflection, and I just cannot fathom how it could be used without cod

Answer 1

Very simple example in Python. Suppose you have a class that have 3 methods:

class SomeClass(object):
    def methodA(self):
       # some code
    def methodB(self):
       # some code
    def methodC(self):
       # some code

Now, in some other class you want to decorate those methods with some additional behaviour (i.e. you want that class to mimic SomeClass, but with an additional functionality). This is as simple as:

class SomeOtherClass(object):
    def __getattr__(self, attr_name):
        # do something nice and then call method that caller requested
        getattr(self.someclass_instance, attr_name)()